Federal Data · No Paid Rankings

Best Colleges for Engineering

Top engineering programs ranked by what their engineering graduates earn, plus completion rates, debt and actual cost. Federal data. No paid rankings.

299

Schools with engineering earnings data

528

Schools with engineering programs in dataset

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How We Rank Engineering Schools

These rankings use what engineering bachelor's graduates earn, not the school-wide average. College Scorecard publishes earnings three years after graduation for each field of study. A school is ranked when it has a published figure for general, aerospace, biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, mechanical and industrial engineering and at least 25 graduates behind it. Where a school has more than one of these programs, the largest is used and the table names it under the figure. Each school is then scored on our 5-component composite using federal data: engineering graduate earnings (28%), graduation rate (25%), social mobility via Pell Grant share (20%), debt burden (15%), and net cost for low-income students (12%). Where a school has not reported one of these, that component is dropped and the remaining weights are rescaled rather than filled in with an estimate. A school with no net price on file for families earning up to $30,000 is scored on its overall average net price instead. Only 4-year non-profit schools with sufficient data qualify.

→Earnings: Median annual earnings of engineering bachelor's graduates three years after they graduate. Source: College Scorecard.
→Graduation rate: Full-time first-time students completing within 150% of normal time. Source: IPEDS.
→Net price: Average annual cost after all grants and scholarships. Source: IPEDS.
→Social mobility: Share of students receiving Pell Grants, a direct measure of access for low-income students. Source: IPEDS.
→Debt burden: Median federal loan debt at graduation. Source: College Scorecard.

Top 10 Engineering Schools (2026)

Ranked by composite: engineering graduate earnings, graduation rate, social mobility, debt, affordability.

#	School	Accept	Net Price/yr	Grad Rate	Gradsin engineering	Earnings (3yr)engineering grads
1	University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA	11%	$16,538	93%	480	$160,666Electrical engineering
2	Duke University Durham, NC	5.7%	$21,981	97%	110	$117,262Computer engineering
3	Stanford University Stanford, CA	3.6%	$25,078	92%	56	$94,255Mechanical engineering
4	Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD	6.4%	$26,017	94%	108	$84,359Biomedical engineering
5	Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA	11.7%	$35,552	94%	157	$129,112Electrical engineering
6	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA	4.5%	$20,996	96%	141	$88,614Mechanical engineering
7	CUNY City College New York, NY	60%	$4,664	57%	100	$78,361Mechanical engineering
8	University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA	5.4%	$23,570	97%	53	$88,779Mechanical engineering
9	Brown University Providence, RI	5.4%	$26,256	96%	80	$80,783General engineering
10	University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA	9%	$14,512	93%	187	$82,663Mechanical engineering

299 of 528 schools with Engineering programs have published engineering graduate earnings and are ranked. Top 10 shown. Earnings are the median for engineering bachelor's graduates three years after graduation, and Grads is how many graduates that figure covers. Data: IPEDS + College Scorecard. Updated annually.

All 528 Colleges in the Dataset

The ranking above shows the top 10 by composite score. Every school in the full dataset is listed here so you can explore beyond the top results.

C

P

R

Randolph-Macon College Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rice University Robert Morris University Rochester Institute of Technology Rockhurst University Roger Williams University Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Rowan University Rutgers University-New Brunswick

S

Saginaw Valley State University Saint Ambrose University Saint Cloud State University Saint Francis University Saint Louis University Saint Martin's University Saint Vincent College San Diego State University San Francisco State University San Jose State University Santa Clara University Savannah College of Art and Design Schreiner University Seattle Pacific University Seattle University Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania Smith College Snow College Sonoma State University South Dakota School of Mines and Technology South Dakota State University Southern Arkansas University Main Campus Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Southern Methodist University Southern University and A & M College St. Mary's University Stanford University State University of New York at New Paltz State University of New York at Oswego Stevens Institute of Technology Stony Brook University SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry SUNY Maritime College SUNY Polytechnic Institute Swarthmore College Sweet Briar College Syracuse University

T

U

127

V

Valparaiso University Vanderbilt University Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology Villa Maria College Villanova University Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Military Institute Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Viterbo University

Y

Yale University York College of Pennsylvania Youngstown State University

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